Current biometric enrollment is either performed on 1) a tactical biometric collection device (e.g., a CrossMatch SEEKII™ or Cogent Fusion™) or on 2) a generic office workstation with attached biometric collection peripherals as used throughout the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to vet and enroll personnel in the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12) Personal Identity Verification (PIV) compliant identity card issuance process.
1) Constructed as a single-purpose, single-unit collection device, existing biometric capture devices are bulky, expensive and unwieldy. In order to conform to military hardening standards and to conserve weight, the display screen and user input devices (keyboard and touchpad) are affixed in a traditional workstation layout, but at a substantially reduced size. While typically featuring a touch screen, the interfaces are designed to be used with the presence of a full keyboard and mouse. All user feedback is visually presented through a small display screen yet some biometric capturing requires the screen to not be directly facing the user. As such, the user must split his or her focus between the collection device and the biometric subject, which can be dangerous in high-risk environments.
2) Typically for law enforcement, business and HR purposes, entire workstations are configured to handle the biometric enrollment process. Biometric peripherals are attached, typically via USB, to allow the workstation to collect all necessary biometrics for an enrollment. While the overall interface is similar, the capture process can vary for specific biometric collection devices. Navigating through the enrollment process is manually driven, forcing the user to spend a portion of the time merely clicking “next.” Biometric quality feedback is typically limited to pass/fail rather than a quality gradient to delineate high quality biometrics from acceptable quality biometrics.
In today's fiscally constrained environment, biometric collection and enrollment remains a growing and burdensome security task for international, national, local and enterprise level organizations. Whether the collection is occurring in a high-risk war theatre setting or in a cooperative, low-risk setting (e.g., a new job applicant enrollment), cost effectiveness, efficiency and ease of use are crucial concerns to ensure proper adoption and use. For high risk environments (e.g., war theatre, border patrol, law enforcement, etc.), modern biometric capturing is typically performed with a relatively high cost and unintuitive device that requires extensive training and encumbrance. Similarly, cooperative biometric capturing tasks, like job applicant enrollment, are performed with costly, anchored workstations that feature archaic interfaces that extend capture time. In both instances, significant costs accrue from, e.g., in-person training, loss of productivity from a lengthy biometric enrollment, large helpdesk support and low end-user acceptance.
Current biometric enrollment systems results in unnecessary accrued costs. Costs accrue through, for example, the following unnecessary requirements:
1) Lengthy enrollment process: lack of automation and outmoded interfaces creates a tedious and unintuitive workflow;
2) Extensive training: hardware and software interfaces are non-standard and require in person training for effective usage. Any significant changes in hardware or software can require re-training;
3) Helpdesk support: with only a priori training, users need to be re-trained on activities if tasks are performed infrequently; and
4) Low user acceptance: difficult to use systems discourage use of biometric-enabled services which reduces ROI of those services.
What is needed is a system that provides intelligent automation of the biometric enrollment process in order to increase efficiency while reducing the training required for effective usage. What is needed is a system that increases worker efficiency and reduces worker training costs by providing an intuitive and user-friendly biometric enrollment process. What is needed is a system that increases biometric enrollment throughput by significantly reducing the length of time needed to perform a full biometric enrollment.